— Wolfgang Krauser, Fatal Fury 2, proving that even SNK can get it right when it comes to proper English.

The sounds used in non-English languages are often very different from the sounds in the English language, and combine in very different ways from anything used in Western speech. The closer a language is to English, the more approximate the sounds/language will be, but there are still situations where the non-English language has sounds that English doesn't, and lacks sounds that English does have. General American English has 13 vowels, 28 consonants, and more diphthongs than you can dip a thong at, they're not all going to match up to every other language in the world.

The result of all this is that when you hear enough language produced with the "wrong" sounds, your ear becomes trained to it, and it sounds natural. Then, when those same voices speak English with English sounds, it's like ice water down the back of the neck. If you can imagine Andy Kaufman dropping his Latka accent in the middle of an episode of Taxi, you might understand what this sounds like.

Makes sense when you think about it. For many people around the world (especially continental Europe) developing highly advanced English skills is considered an inextricable part of joining the global, internationalist elite. Some of the errors commonly made by many native speakers of English will hardly ever happen in extra-Anglophone circles, where people will strive to make their English as grammatically correct as possible, which is why the likes of the omission of the Pluperfect tense ("had been", "had done" etc.), omnipresent in American English, will be rather hard to come by in when listening to a speaker of English from, say, Scandinavia.

Similarily, since the vast majority of the non-English speaking global population will start learning both the spoken and written variant of English at roughly the same time (as opposed to native speakers who will spend at least a couple of years just listening to English before they begin to read it), you will rarely see them confusing phonetically close yet visually and semantically distant phrases, such as "your" and "you're".

See Gratuitous English for when non-English language works add English for flavour, but don't get it quite right.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Guin Saga's song "This is My Road" has English lyrics, which aren't broken.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn has some surprisingly good English going on throughout the entire series. The Unicorn's AI speaks fluent English, and in the beginning of episode 1, assuming Translation Convention, we hear the prime minister speaking Japanese, and he is actually speaking really good English faintly in the background. There is also episode 5 which at the beginning has a whole dialogue in English, although one of the participants speaks with a heavy Asian accent. And then there's the contents of Laplace's Box aka The original Universal Century Charter as revealed in Episode 7, which is written in perfectly good English, being an official document and all.

The Devil May Cry anime has an episode about a ghost haunting people that played her Rock records. The song (Future in my Hands by Aimee B) is surprisingly well spoken English. Then again, this one probably shouldn't be "surprisingly", since her full name is Aimee Blackschleger and she is an American singer who moved to Japan for her career.

Angel Beats! TK can speak perfect English. It probably helps that his VA is American, and also that he doesn't have many lines in the anime. What he actually SAYS, though, ventures wholeheartedly into Gratuitous English territory. "Dive into your body!"

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (the Japanese version) features some somewhat accented but quite understandable English. For example, just listen to Allelujah in Episode 6 of Season 2 say "I have control".

Momoko on Ojamajo Doremi is nearly a native English speaker, and learned Japanese shortly after being introduced as a character. Her lines in English- even a simple "Yeah!"- can be quite shocking when unexpected and all this despite having a local VA (Miyahara Nami). Nami Miyahara moved with her family to Austria when she was young, and she speaks almost fluent English and German because of that. Similarly, Momoko moved to America with her family and lived there for most of her childhood. It should be noted, however, that one episode has her referring to her earring as a "pierce", which is the Japanese translation for earring.

The first Digimon Adventure 02 movie, Supreme Evolution! The Golden Digimentals!, starred Wallace, an American character who was also voiced by Nami Miyahara. Many people didn't even believe it was a single voice actress. Amusingly, she still pronounced his name "Warrace" which was odd considering how fluently she spoke every other English word. The other characters do speak English occasionally in this film as it takes place in America; while it's mainly common phrases (good luck, thank you, see you soon, etc), they get them right.

The opening and ending songs for Super Dimension Century Orguss have perfectly pronounced English within both. This can be contributed to the fact that their singer, Casey Rankin, was raised in the United States until the age of 25 before moving to Japan.

Lyrical Nanoha has English voice actors for the main characters' magic devices. In the first season, their lines are relatively grammatical, but in the second season, they have extended lines with more questionable grammar. Similarly with the German devices—their collective VA, Tetsuya Kakihara, was raised in Düsseldorf.

As is often the case in the voice recording business, although the hired voice actors are perfectly fluent in their respective languages, they have virtually no authority in changing the script, even if to improve it. Their clunky delivery, however, is apparently deliberate to emphasize their artificiality.

Although the Compilation Movie of the first season had the devices speaking very good English.

In [C] - Control, ATMs and Negotiations use English. Jennifer's boss at the International Monetary Fund is also voiced by a native English speaker, though Jennifer is not (since that character is not a bit part, most of her lines are in Japanese).

In Sakura Wars: The Movie, Maria delivers a couple of lines in near-flawless English and manages something vaguely akin to a New Yorker accent, since (despite being Russian) she was supposed to have lived in New York for a while before coming to Japan. Ironically, the "American" characters in the movie speak typical Engrish.

With the exception of Ratchet, who's pronunciation (with the exception of "please") and inflection are actually pretty decent, as seen here.

Though not voiced by one of the characters, the opening theme to Hell Girl has the seemingly mandatory Gratuitous English sung in exceptionally good English, as the singer was raised in the US.

The soundtrack to .hack//SIGN features several songs primarily in English, the main vocalist being American singer Emily Bindiger.

Ozaru and Kozaru in Jubei-chan 2 have an "English Interlude" specifically because they hope that the show is becoming popular in the States.

The baseball episode of Samurai Champloo features Admiral Joy Cartwright and his translator being voiced by- gasp- actual Americans. (Inverted possibly by the translator's Surprisingly Good Japanese?) The opening theme to the series, "Battlecry", was also done by someone who knows how to actually speak English: Shing 02, who had the benefit of a champloo-ish upbringing born in Tokyo; childhood in Tanzania, England, and Japan; and adolescence in the States.

As a side note, the episode with the Dutch East India Company contains some Surprisingly Good Dutch too.

Words cannot express how creepy and startling Honey's line is when you first hear it, what with the differences in voice and this trope.

Nana is full of good English, from the songs that various cast members sing to various lines they say. When Shin says "Good night, Rena, sweet dreams", it's actually shocking how good his English is, considering this is the first time he's used it. It's fitting, since the character was raised in America; being a series with no small amount of time dedicated to vocalists Nana pays a lot of attention to the accuracy of its voice acting.

BECK, where all the American characters speak ludicrously bad Engrish aside from John Lee Davis — who sounds, for some reason, remarkably like Martin Sheen...

Quite a few characters in BECK are voiced by American expats - Leon Sykes, his henchman Goldie, Dying Breed, and the director of their documentary (that doesn't necessarily mean they can act, however). Two songs from the soundtrack, "My World Down" and "I Call You Love", are by British singers Gary Stringer and Mark Gardener, with lyrics by Tim Jensen, best known for his work with Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex amongst them).

Blood: The Last Vampire has an American military base on Okinawa as the setting, and all the dialogue in English is done by American voice actors, with several characters having double cast (this also highlights the difference in acting levels, with English VAs being noticeably wooden but over the top, but that's a different story.) Seeing as Blood was done before a lot of major series caused anime to take off in America, the fact that the VAs are actually not bad, if not a little wooden, is quite impressive.

Maybe not quite as perfect as the previous one, but the Tonight, Tonight, Tonight song that is also from Bleach makes enough sense that any minor mistakes are forgivable.

Listen to the Hero Tales opening, and try to figure out what they're saying. It's the same guys.

Many of the opening and ending songs combine Surprisingly Good English and/or Gratuitous English with the Japanese in varying amounts.

The first ending song, Rie Fu's "Life is Like a Boat". It helps that she speaks fluent English from living in Maryland for three years and going to school in London.

A recurring song, "Nothing Can Be Explained", is in English and performed by a British singer - the guy who wrote the lyrics for Komm, süsser Tod, in fact. It's difficult to tell in show since his voice is rather faint, but it's clear on the soundtrack.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex likes to play everything backwards, and has both Gratuitous English and Surprisingly Good English side by side. None of the voice actors can pronounce English very well, and mangle the random English phrases. The opening themes are written almost entirely in Surprisingly Good English and Surprisingly Good Russian, with some verses even in Surprisingly Good Latin. The actual reason for this is the performer, Origa (Olga), being originally Russian.

The opening shot of the original film contains simultaneous English and Japanese voiceovers; the soundtrack of the second film contains two songs - "River of Crystals" and "Follow Me" - sung in slightly accented but grammatically correct, intelligible English by Kimiko Ito, the former of which was composed by Kenji Kawai specifically for the film.

"Blue", the ending theme for the last episode of Cowboy Bebop, is in flawless English. In fact, half the songs by The Seatbelts with lyrics are in Surprisingly Good English, thanks in no small part to Yamane Mai and American-born singers Emily Bindiger and Steve Conte, who between the three of them sing the vast majority of the series' English-language music.

Serial Experiments Lain makes extensive use of Surprisingly Good English, from the opening theme to computer interfaces, C programming, English lessons, multiple allegedly historical documents, and different aspects of the Wired.

The opening theme is actually a song written by a now-defunct British band, Boa, which features two of Paul Rodgers' children. Hardly surprising the English was so good, really.

The opening scene of Project A-ko has astronauts working on a space probe, and speaking perfect American English.

Also, Project A-Ko is reckoned to be the first anime ever to have had the soundtrack songs in the original Japanese version recorded entirely in English.

Crest of the Stars has a very brief scene in the first episode that can cause similar reactions.

End of Evangelion has not one, but three songs (four, if you count the one cut from the final release of the film) sung in perfect, unaccented English with entirely sensible (and appropriate) lyrics. Of course, it helps that composer Shiro Sagisu went abroad to have these songs recorded by native English-speakers.

In the series itself, the American pilots carrying Unit 03 to Japan at the beginning of episode 18 speak in perfect English, going so far as to have Japanese subtitles. It also deserves credit for its references to numerous English/American authors and artists of various kinds, including a correct quote from Robert Browning's "Pippa Passes" (the now-iconic "God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World"), the infamous excerpt from Handel's "Messiah", the reference to Bach's "Air on the G String", etc. Worth mentioning too is the fact that every single one of the series' English episode titles. (which were all named by Anno) makes sense, and many are references to Western literature, film, music, and psychological theory (to provide examples of each respectively: "Lilliputian Hitcher", "The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still", "The Beginning and the End, or 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door'", and "Introjection")

Rebuild 2.0. features Mari talking over the phone with someone in grammatically correct English, and speaks very coherently, though with a bit of an accent. Also, nearly the entire entire opening scene is in English, featuring native speakers as extras. Kaji also speaks some English, but...let's just say reading the Japanese subtitles were easier. When Unit-02 is sealed away and then released by Mari, American voices can be heard in the background.

In the third episode of Martian Successor Nadesico Yurika addresses a United Earth Force assembly in English. Her accent is thick, but her pronunciation is much better than the supposedly English-speaking extras. Her exact words are, "We'd like to reach escape velocity from the Earth in three hours, buuuuuuut... if you don't put the Big Barrier down for a moment, the Nadesico and the barrier satellites will be damaged. Would you mind pulling the barrier down PLEEEEEEEASE??" When UEF refuses her request she then adds, "So, we'll break through the barrier forcibly!"

Makoto Shinkai's movies Voices of a Distant Star (Hoshi no koe) and The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Kumo no mukou, yakusoku no basho) both feature English lines spoken by native speakers; in the former, it's a series of public address announcements on the ship Lysithea (Donna Burke, who also voiced Nanoha's Raising Heart), while in the latter, it's a brief conversation between an American intelligence agent and military officer.

Oddly, though the accent is (naturally) perfect, the actual words are All-your-base-are-belong-to-us weird ("Their block exists in orbit").

The voice actor Ryo Horikawa for Heiji Hattori in the Detective Conan anime is proficient in English, leading to his character speaking better English than a character who is supposed to be American. When he was a child, his family hosted an American girl. He helped her learn Japanese, she helped him learn English. Also the anchorwoman from the 6th Detective Conan movie. Extremely unnerving having the first lines in a Japanese movie being in perfect English— justified as that's Boston, she's supposed to be a Boston-area news anchor.

The opening animation for Jyu-Oh-Sei features approximately 50/50 Japanese and English. The English makes about as much sense as the rest of the song does, and there is relatively little accent or "Japanese-isms".

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny and Bleach both feature ending themes (the third and first, respectively) which transition from Japanese to grammatically-correct English flawlessly. This should probably come as no surprise since the singer of both songs, Rie fu, spent four years in America and speaks English fluently.

Also, Bleach'sTheme Music Power-Up song, Number One, a Motown-esque song sung entirely in English. It is a step more surprising, however, because the lead singer sounds distinctly African American. Which she is (sort of): the song is sung by UK artist Hazel Fernandes.

The closing theme to GUN×SWORD, "A Rising Tide", was written by a native English speaker and sung by a native Japanese speaker. Thus, the only time there's a goof involves the L/R problem - "give me my sword" sounds like "give me my soul".

Thankfully, the English parts of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's "Libera Me from Hell" were very good, with a couple easily-ignored exceptions, such as pronouncing "don't" as "dahnt"

There's also Viral's theme music, "Nikopol", which is not only perfect English but also has lyrics that sum up Viral's philosophy very well.

And the full version of the song is actually in quite good English (and has a ridiculously long namenote "Rap is a Man's Soul! Heads Up and Listen to the Man Who Seeks the Heavens, Kamina's Theme!" Told you so.). It's also what the English parts of "Libera Me from Hell" are taken from.

There's also "Gattai nante Kusokurae!!", the background music played in a lot of fights at the beginning of the series (you'll probably remember it by the line "Into the eye of the storm"). This song (and "Nikopol") is arranged by Taku Iwasaki and performed by qadtbep. It's sorta-kinda Kamina's theme.

"Gattai nante Kusokurae" is the track known in English as "To Hell With Gattai (aka "Combine")", as the name would imply it tends to play when Kamina & Shimon aren't combined. And since Lagann exists only for the Fastball Special when the two aren't combined...

The English actually spoken in the series is another matter. Some of it is pretty good, such as "Infhinity Bigu Bangu Sthorm" (letters added because of the accent). On the other hand Gimmy and Darry horribly butcher any English they're given.

"Mr. Raindrop", the second ending theme to Gintama, was sung completely in perfect English; the band attended a school taught primarily in both English and Chinese.

Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl has NASA using some well pronounced English in episode 1, which sounds like it was spoken by actual Americans. It's generally grammatically correct, unfortunately it doesn't sound like anything a real person would say and then it falls apart at the last second ("A CALL TO THE PRESIDENT!"). Also, it sounded like they just grabbed some random tourists off the street and paid them to read the lines because it's really badly acted.

While it doesn't sound like anything an English speaker would say, the words themselves are a practically perfect literal translation of the Japanese subtitles displayed, which themselves represent appropriate dialogue for those characters. This all goes to show you that there's more to translation than literally interpreting what was said.

Ergo Proxy's opening song, "Kiri", is a flawlessly-sung all-English song courtesy of Japanese rockers Monoral (Anis Shimada and Ali Morizumi). Considering that lead singer Shimada was born in London and is quadrilingual (apart from Japanese and English, he can also speak French and Arabic) and Morizumi is Japanese-American (though born and raised in Tokyo, he can speak both languages fluently himself), this is quite understandable.

The ending theme of Trinity Blood is sung in English; although it has a rough Japanese accent, the grammar is actually fluent.

Angela Burton from Genshiken is an example of this trope: actress Yuki Kaida's English is clear and mostly properly inflected, if unnaturally slow and stilted (her biggest problem is only due to the accent common when trying to change from one language to another. It's not surprising that she likes to speak English in real life from time to time). And it's a good thing, because in the episode where she first appears, she has long stretches of unsubtitled lines. In contrast, Ohno (voiced by Ayako Kawasumi) sounds like she has no idea what she's saying when she and Angela converse: despite the grammatical accuracy of her dialogue, her poor pronunciation renders many of her lines unintelligible. And this, when Ohno's supposed to have lived in America for ten years. Kasukabe's voice actress, Satsuki Yukino, also speaks in a very good neutral English accent, probably the best international English of all the cast members. In all, though poorly pronounced, all the other character's English were easily intelligible (unless you just refuse to listen).

In Second Season, which has an entirely new voice cast, Ohno - now voiced by Yukana - has much better English, as shown when Angela returns for an episode and the two have a conversation in a couple scenes.

An episode of Kimagure Orange Road had the Power Trio on vacation in Hawaii, and kidnapped by a gang of thugs who mistook Hikaru for a local shipping heiress. Madoka spoke passable English (appropriate for the high school student she was). The Hawaiian thugs all spoke English, oddly accented, but easily hand waved in that these were low-rent Mooks who spoke with a regional accent.

Although only one word, hearing Chihara Minori say "unique" in Haruhi Suzumiya may arouse suspicions of fluency in the listener.

"All kids hold an egg in their soul, the egg of our hearts, our would-be selves, yet unseen..." the quote that plays right before the opening of every episode of Shugo Chara! may threw watchers for a loop the first time they hear it, to the point where they might mistake it for a dub. The sentence itself doesn't make sense, but it doesn't sound like a Japanese accent.

The soundtrack to Haibane Renmei has some songs by native speaker Paula Terry.

The episode title cards in Last Exile have the titles read in surprisingly fluent English. (In fact, it only becomes apparent that it's not a native speaker in episode 5, in which "Positional" is pronounced "Pogitional".) "Last Exile" itself though, is not pronounced even remotely right most of the time, being rendered as "Rasuto Egisaiaru".

Texhnolyze's second ED that plays at the very last episode, "Walking in this Empty Earth" features English lyrics and while they are heavily accented the grammar is correct and understandable. There is also the short intro spoken in the mostly instrumental OP, it may only amount to one sentence but it is uttered without an accent.

ef: A Tale Of Memories uses English for its theme song lyrics, some parts of the novel written by Chihiro and in the post-episode trailer, which aside from some pronunciation-issues is well-executed.

Same deal with ef: A Tale of Melodies except all the text in the background is in German.

Genesis of Aquarion's opening theme has been performed by Akino and Bless4 (her siblings) in both Japanese and fluent English: they grew up in the US.

She goes one better and later speaks Surprisingly Good Cantonese as well. The actress portraying her speaks all three languages fluently.

Yakitate!! Japan has "To All the Dreamers", a disco-ish rap song, for the second ending theme. You can be caught off guard at how perfect the English parts of the song were when played in the credits.

Not only is the English pronounced well, but the rapper sings in Japanese with an American accent, too.

In episode 5 of Mahou Sensei Negima!'s first anime adaptation, Nodoka - played by Mamiko Noto - is able to read a long sentence in perfect English without a slip-up besides the word 'asked' (a-Su-ka-do). Ironically, Negi - played by Rina Satō - who was supposed to be giving the English lesson could barely speak a word of coherent English despite the surprised reaction from the class who apparently thought it sounded good. Interestingly, the Latin used in the series is spoken somewhat well.

The first trailer for Kiddy Grade was accompanied by the song "If I...", which was a mix of Japanese and Surprisingly Good English. To untrained ears, it might even sound like the Japanese is English-accented, rather than the expected reverse.

All the English spoken by the native English speakers in the first episode of Eden of the East, as well as all the written signs and the OP (which is done by Noel Gallagher) is in perfect English, even getting the accents acceptably well down.

In addition, all portrayals of DC are entirely accurate, down to the interior of Dulles International Airport.

The Big O'sAward Bait Song "And Forever" duet has near-flawless English grammar, pronunciation and inflections. Additionally, each episode title is in English, with each next episode preview featuring a dramatic reading of the upcoming episode's title. Of course, the show is set in what was New York City, but that sort of thing doesn't tend to help in these situations.

The opening and ending to Manga/Wolf's Rain. It’s justified in the opening because Steve Conte is originally from America.

And Steve Conte has collaborated with Yoko Kanno in other times, too. He sang various songs from the next anime series. Brain Powerd (with the song "True Love"), Cowboy Bebop (with various songs, such the male version of "Rain", "Call me call me", "Words That Couldn't Say", etc...), Wolf's Rain (the opening song "Stray", as mentioned before, and other songs, such as "Heaven's Not Enough" and "Could You Bite My Hand?") and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (with "living inside the shell"). Outside the anime material, there are two more songs: "Nowhere and Everywhere" from Yoko's album Song to fly, and "THE GARDEN OF EVERYTHING ~Denki Rocket ni Kimi wo Tsurete~", with backing vocals from Maaya Sakamoto (who is herself reasonably proficient in English, though she's admitted she lacks confidence in her language skills).

Second Gig has Surprisingly Good Russian and English combined in the theme, "Rise". The singer, "Origa" is Russian. The theme was written by her friend, composer Kanno Yoko.

Sword of the Stranger's English dub has a lot of surprisingly good Chinese speakers. Only one character spoke hard-to-understand, heavily accented Chinese...the transplanted European.

The beginning of the newest Naruto opening is grammatically correct, though it is quite noticeably accented. The very first ending straddles the line between this and regular Gratuitous English.

The fourth Shippuden opening "Closer" includes perfect English ("And the closer you get to something, the tougher it is to see it, and I'll never take it for granted, let's go!"), because the song's performer (and writer and composer) Joe Inoue is a Japanese American born in Los Angeles.

The ending Wind from the original series is also sung surprisingly well.

In an episode of Daphne in the Brilliant Blue There are a few lines by some people from Siberia City who speak English flawlessly, though it's highly possible that the people who did the English speaking spoke English as their native tongue. Also Rena speaks English as well. Assuming her VA speaks English, she did a damn good job.

Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- has a few songs that have some good English in them, which shouldn't be horribly surprising considering Yuki Kajiura composed them—she's also the one who composed "Obsession" and other .hack//SIGN songs. "Tsubasa", an insert song is entirely in English, and although the singer has a recognizable accent, you can still understand what she's saying without subtitles. "You are my Love", is another insert song entirely in English and there's very little accent that's only noticeable with a few words (that don't have Rs or Ls). The insert song, "Ring your Song", is also all in English and is very easy to understand. The only word that the singer seemed to have minimal trouble with was "Ancient."

Soul Eater has some really good English on the OST. "Psychedelic Souljam", "Soul-Eater (So Scandalous)", "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Have a Nice Dream" and "STEP UP" all come to mind; all of them are rapped and the English is grammatically correct. "Black Star (Never Lose Myself)" has some good English, too, although the singer has an accent it's still easy to understand him. "Death the Kid (So Crazy)" also has nice English. The female vocals have an accent, but subtitles aren't needed at all. Surprisingly, the song "Butterfly in the Still" by the same composer, Taku Iwasaki, has just plain horrible English. Whole phrases are almost entirely incoherent; it's a shame since it's a beautiful song... just impossible to understand.

The OST to Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas has flawless grammar and perfect pronunciations, even on difficult phrases like "Realm of Athena". It's startlingly good, to the point that it feels like a taunt to the English-speaking fandom that will never see an official release of the series in their language.

Tokyo Tribe 2 has a minor character in episode 6 who speaks English... to a Japanese guy. Later on, we have Surprisingly Good Mandarin with Sunmi and Jadakings. The latter's Mandarin is so good, it actually confuses Kai as to what he's saying ("Where is the princess?")

Also, a number of Pokémon related Widget Songs were done by a trio known as "Suzukisan". The songs often featured a large amount of Surprisingly Good English, mostly due to one of the members being an American. (Said American also provided the voice of the pirate trainer at the start of the Japanese version of Pokémon: The First Movie.)

Chiyo-Dad in Azumanga Daioh speaks grammatically correct English, courtesy of one Norio Wakamoto. The intonation is actually perfect ("How ah YOU?" "FINE, SANK you"), even pronouncing l's and v's correctly, sounds which don't exist in Japanese. He doesn't get the "th" right, but very few foreigners do.

In an earlier episode, Yukari gives a speech in perfect English, though slightly accented. She was giving a speech about how Japanese English students are embarrassed about their poor English and would rather speak Japanese than bad English.

It's amazing how Hellsing OVA VI ending theme "Magnolia" was sung in remarkable English, as was Schaft when they sang the ironically titled trailer song "Broken English". And the end credits sequence had actual English spoken in the talk balloons.

It's made even more obvious because of the difficult nature of the two main characters' names to Japanese speakers. Remember the issues they have with definitive L and R sounds, then look at EDWARD and ALPHONSE ELRIC. Bonus points to the fact that each name gets 2-3 extra syllables thanks to pronunciations. Aside from the names, there's only the barest smattering of Gratuitous English in the series itself.

A note left by Dr Marcoh in the original series is written in fragmented but accurate English. Given that Marcoh is trying to reveal as little information as possible for fear of it being leaked, this actually makes sense.

The certificate that the Military gives Ed (the one with his new title of "Fullmetal Alchemist") is written in good English. It's in plain spoken English, something the real military would never write in, but it's far from Engrish.

The eponymous Death Note was written in perfect English because, according to Ryuk, it's the most common international language of humans. It is the international language of business, after all. Light can read it because, as we see in the beginning, he's one of the best English students in the country, even understanding qualifiers like "as" (which lots of Japanese have trouble with), "therefore" and "whosoever". There are a couple spelling mistakes (like "looses" instead of "loses"), which is understandable, as the misspellings are all words that some native speakers have trouble with. There's also one or two misplaced commas (again, something natives have trouble with). But overall, it looks like it was written by a native English speaker very familiar with legalese. Obata must have learned by reading all those ToA's in English software.

Rainbow pulls the English off very brilliantly. Not only do all the American soldiers speak real English (it's highly likely that their VA's are actually American since they have the accent to boot.), the Japanese talking English have the regular 'Engrish' you have in other anime. This makes the situations where Japanese (with their natural accent) talks with an American (who talks real English) completely realistic. Respect for pulling that off.

On top of this, the opening song, "We're not alone" by Japanese band Coldrain, is written and sung in excellent English that also fits the plot really well. It helps that the lead singer, Masato, is American.

Invoked in the cold opening of the first episode of Giant Killing, with the random Englishman's properly... English (as in British!) sounding voice, and with the Japanese observers' properly but not unintelligibly accented English. Sadly, the trope is subverted not more than a few seconds later in the opening theme.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence features two songs in English with sensible lyrics, sung with only a slight accent by jazz singer Kimiko Ito. The ending song, "Follow Me", is in fact an arrangement of a song originally written in English, but the earlier one, "River of Crystals", was written for the movie by Kenji Kawai.

Propaganda film means they probably had access to native English speakers (Nisei) who had been attending school in Japan when the war broke out. The intelligence services grabbed most of them (willing or not).

A fun example from the Sukeban Deka OVA. One of the Mizuki sisters makes a drug deal with an American dealer. The supposed American speaks terrible Engrish, but the girl's English is flawless.

In the Great Saiyaman arc of Dragon Ball Z, Son Gohan has an English teacher who, despite having a slight accent, speaks very good English. Of course, Fridge Logic sets in when you note that everyone on Earth (and even aliens in most cases) in Dragon Ball appear to speak the same language...

There's an infamous Engrish scene in Itazura Na Kiss, but as bad as the pronunciation is, the grammar and syntax are perfect.

The opening song to Deadman Wonderland is performed entirely in English by fade, a Japanese band that has four members raised in America. Three of the members are Japanese-Americans, and lead singer Jonathan Underwood was born and raised in Seattle.

An episode of Sacred Seven features an auctioneer voiced by a British expat.

Sailor Moon had an episode where the characters went to a party at the British embassy, and the main characters spoke the language at various degrees of ability: Usagi and Makoto were terrible (apparently Makoto thinks 'thank you' is a form of salute); Rei and Mamoru can speak it decently, if accented; Ami and Minako were speaking almost perfect Queen's English. Justified in Minako's case, as the anime version had her fighting youma in London for a period and the flashback of that period showed her having no communication problems, hinting she picked up the language pretty fast.

When Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari says "Parent Teacher Association", this trope is clearly evident.

Super Dimension Fortress Macross: While none of the main cast speaks English onscreen, it's made fairly obvious that English is the default language of the show. In both the original series and Macross: Do You Remember Love?, there are shots of English writing (in the series, Minmay displays a letter from an agency offering her an audition, while in the movie, we get a close-up of Misa's handwritten lyrics to the title song) that show that either someone on staff was fluent in English or knew someone who was. Additionally, Do You Remember Love?'s background dialogue includes a fair amount of pretty good English, which is particularly noticeable with the Macross's intercom system.

There was also a bit of the series's theme that was rather decent English. "Will you love me tomorrow?", for example.

The manga of Black Lagoon counts. The anime doesn't do as well, but it shines when Rock translates for Balalaika during the meeting with the Yakuza, and when Revy is talking to Ginji in the same arc.

Amusingly, flipped while played straight in the dub; Brad Swaile is proficient enough in Japanese to do actual translation work on the side.

Love Lucky: When Fuuta and Kirari travelled to Hawaii, they met a foreigner asking for directions in English. To the readers (and Kirari's) surprise, Fuuta spoke English. He then explained to Kirari a former girlfriend of his tricked him into buying tapes made to teach people English and he decided not to waste the money.

It's made even more surprising when, up to that point, one would expect Kirari to be better than him at English.

The anime adaptation of Kiniro Mosaic obviously had someone on staff who knows their English. Two of the main characters are British girls who occasionally speak their native English, and the first episode is set mostly in England. The pronunciation of some of the words is off, but the grammar is near perfect.

Isao Sasaki once sang an English version of the Mazinger Z theme song in natural sounding English, if a bit accented. Ichiro Mizuki's English version on the other hand....

"Somewhere", the last ending theme to Slayers Try, is sung by Houko Kuwashima. Kuwashima demonstrates surprisingly good English for the vocals. (It is also of interesting note that Megumi Hayashibara does not sing this song, making it the only Slayers theme song she doesn't sing.)

Shinryaku! Ika Musume had an episode where Cindy (an American) was teaching the main characters how to speak English, where she actually speaks fluent English even if her line reading was a little flat, although it's not the usual actress for that line.

"Before My Body is Dry" from Kill la Kill sort of skirts the line between this and plain ol' Gratuitous English. On one hand, Mika Kobayashi pronounces the lyrics fairly well. On the other hand, the lyrics themselves are a tad broken. There are good bits, such as the lines "you're the only one who can help me out/we'll be as one", and "I gotta find out who killed my dad", both of which make perfect sense, but then there are lines like "may you surprised so much" and "this is the way to be more strong", which don't really add up. There is, however, a rap part in the middle of the song done in perfect English both pronunciation and grammar-wise; it's just not very good.

Also Mako's theme, "Light Your Heart Up", which is sung in perfect English by Aimee B.

In the Gun Gale Online arc of Sword Art Online, there's a mini-game called "Untouchable" where a cowboy NPC tries to shoot you, and taunts you at the same time. It's perfectly obvious that they got an actual American to voice him in the anime. His lines are still the tiniest bit stilted (which sometimes happens when English actors are directed by people who don't speak the language), but he's just a program, so it's justified.

Gundam Build Fighters contains a surprising amount of accurate English text. To give just two examples: Episode 8 has Nils Neilsen research his upcoming opponent Greco Logan online, and can be seen reading a fully-written article about Greco's rivalry with Italian champ Ricardo Fellini. Likewise, Episode 18 shows the Renato brothers reading message board posts praising Meijin Kawaguchi III, one of which contains the Pun "Is he amazing because he's A-Meijin?".

Assassination Classroom has some very well written English, to the point where ironically the only error in an English newspaper article in episode 2 was misspelling a Japanese word. (Specifically, misspelling "Hentai" as "Heitai".)

In Operation 04 of the OVA of Sentou Yousei Yukikaze, a pair of Japanese Navy F/27s that intercept Yukikaze speak English when they demand Rei and Jack disarm and follow them. Though their pronunciation of "disarm" leaves much to be desired, the sentence "You have been intercepted" is quite clear and easily understood. About a minute later, after the Japanese fleet commander orders his ships to shoot down the JAM fighters closing in on them, the fire control officer says "All stations, launch SAMs" in English.

In "Utano Prince Sama", Starish speaks English quite well in their opening theme, "Maji Love 1000%," with the expection of them saying, "Let's song!" in the beginning. They do say the grammatically correct, "Let's dance!" later, though.

The opening scene in theYuru-Yuri Nachuyasumi OVA. Despite the fact that it has no reason to be in English, and the horrible pronunciation, the dialogue itself is grammatically sound. Though the phrase "never mind" seems to be used differently than an English-speaker would use it.

Attack on Titan: Several songs in the soundtrack have perfect English grammar, such as Calling Your Name. Special mention goes to DOA, which not only has grammatically perfect lyrics about what it's like to be a member of the Survey Corps, but is also pronounced perfectly as well. This one is because the song is performed by Aimee Blackschleger, an American singer living in Japan who has also contributed music to Guilty Crown and Final Fantasy XIII-2

Fairy Tail: Most of the character's powers are in English. Pitch perfect English.

It also helps that at least the main hero's seiyuu is confirmed to be able to speak 5 languages, one of which is English itself.

Terror in Resonance has Five's FBI handler Clarence talking to his superiors on the phone in flawless English, and though his actor is Japanese he's apparently fluent. Five speaks pretty well herself albeit with a bit of an accent but this is justified as she was a Japanese orphan originally.

Legend of Galactic Heroes has three opening themes in unaccented, perfectly structured English. The fourth opening theme is also in English, though with a noticeably thicker accent.

In the anime of Kin'iro no Corda, the opening song, performed by Kanon, breaks into perfect English at certain points. It isn't quite that surprising, given how she spent most of her childhood abroad.

Kyo Kara Maoh! has a rather surprising example, as the character songs for the series contain a near perfect rendition of Love Me Tender, performed by none other than Toshiyuki Morikawa. It's quite uncanny when you hear it.

Panzer World Galient's opening theme has several lines of English (in fact, the original singer, EUROX, also recorded a 100% English version), and its ending theme is almost entirely in English. Not only is the pronunciation is pretty good (though a Japanese accent is still occasionally noticeable), but the grammar is perfect.

In Episode 4, Yuko's text to Yurio is written in English, and it seems she's quite fluent in the language.

Jean-Jacques Leroy's short program theme music, "Theme of King J.J.", has lyrics that make sense (save a few) and are well-pronounced, as expected of a theme song about a Canadian character. It's sung by Swedish singer Linus Norda rather than J.J.'s voice actor.

The four songs on Your Name's soundtrack were rerecorded with English lyrics for the English dub and, with a few exceptions - like a gratuitous untranslated "zenzenzen" in "Zenzenzense" - RADWIMPS guitarist and vocalist Yojiro Noda's delivery is fluent and grammatical. It probably helped that he spent a few childhood years in the US.

Fan Fiction

Stories that claim "Sorry, English is my second language", generally fall into one of two categories: lazy writers looking for excuses, and actual foreigners with highly proper English.note But since even excellent second-language English speakers can occasionally lapse into first-language informed mistakes, and it is generally the case that the more you know, the more you know what you don't know, their pre-emptive apologies are usually much more sincere than they are with rehearsed speeches. Rest assured that it works both ways and at that level one can also make English-informed mistakes in one's own language...

In the The King of Fighters fic Sore ga Ai, Deshou?, when Andy first meets Mai's father Kazutaka, he notes that he speaks "really good" English. Kazutaka explains that he studied a semester in Boston.

Film

The Japanese film, ''Ichi the Killer", features actress Alien Sun playing Karen, a waitress who speaks perfect English and presumably decent Cantonese.

The first Japanese Death Note movie has an American playing Lind L. Tailor, L's decoy, and talking in English while a voice-over speaks in Japanese.

The female lead in Densha Otoko speaks a bit of English to an ambassador near the end of the film in a damn British accent.

The aristocratic German and French officers in Jean Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion both speak each other's languages fluently but use English as a sign of class solidarity, giving the audience a trilingual bonus.

A French character (Shoshana), who never spoke any English at any other point in Inglourious Basterds, makes a speech to a large audience of Germans, in perfect English. Because her family was slaughtered in part due to their inability to understand English, it makes sense that she would have made an effort to correct that lack.

Jackie Chan's Around The World In 80 Days features several fellow Hongkong actors in cameos - while in real life, only one of them (Sammo Hung) did not speak Surprisingly Good English, the movie had all of them with halting accents except Karen Mok, playing the Black Scorpion chieftain, presumably for the creepy factor.

And the David Niven film Around the World in 80 Days has Fogg talk to a stereotypical looking wise old Chinese man in loud Pidgin English, only for him to turn out to be fluent with a perfect accent.

The pronunciation and grammatical structure in the Bollywood film Aaina is excellent. However, it occurs so randomly and often unnecessarily (for example, after some antique bathroom furniture is delivered to the house, after yelling at the daughter in their native language, her father suddenly blurts out, "I don't have money to burn on this antique rubbish" in perfect English.) it feels more like Gratuitous English.

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man's dialogue certainly counts. It helped that the script is translated from Japanese, not to mention this being (so far) the only film to feature Americans.

Uco in The Raid 2 speaks English at one point with his yakuza counterpart Keiichi. Keiichi has a stronger accent, whereas Uco is more proficient. His father converses with them in Japanese, which angers him (given that Japan has previously occupied Indonesia during WW2, this isn't too surprising, plus there's his belief that their family should be dominant in Jakarta), meaning there's an actual character-based reason for him to speak in another language.

Almost every character in the 2014 Live-Action Adaptation of Lupin III speaks surprisingly good English, to the point where there's probably just as much spoken English as there is Japanese.

Literature

Considering Dracula is depicted as an uncouth, filthy warlord in Anno Dracula, many characters are surprised by his excellent, accent-less command of English.

The same applies in Dracula. Dracula is remarked on as speaking very good English, and spends a lot of time with Johnathan Harker in an attempt to become not only good, but fluent as well. He explains that if his handle on the language isn't perfect, he would just be seen as another Funny Foreigner in England, and he is too proud to let that happen.

A classic example occurs in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Adam Trask's cook Lee speaks perfect Engrish when he's first hired, but that soon is revealed to be a ruse; Lee speaks perfectly good English, but he found it ran so counter to people's preconceptions that the only way he could be accepted in American society was to conform to the stereotype.

In Murderess, this applies to James, the boy from Chopped Tree Inn, and to the Dark Ones’ king, who is particularly eloquent.

Live-Action TV

Duke Watari from Cutey Honey The Live often switches between Japanese and English, even in the middle of conversations. He also swears in English when angered. This is due to actor Mark Musashi, while born in Japan, is half-American and grew up in Maine before returning to Japan to act.

On Deadwood, Mr. Lee, the new Chinese arrival from San Francisco and rival to Wu, speaks perfect English. Al Swearengen is visibly shocked when Lee reveals this.

The opening narration of GARO is spoken entirely in grammatically correct English. Garo also features Mark Musashi as the mute Kodama until an appearance in the Mind Screw DVD-only episode Garo Gaiden: Smile, where he literally appears out of nowhere and verbally assaults the female lead with a whole string of Surprisingly Good English, with some Genre Savvy and Medium Awareness thrown in.

"Oh, you must forgive me because I usually don't have any lines and I have SO MUCH that I've PENT UP that I WANT to SAAAYYY!! Oh, but you know if I get out of hand the directors will be so upset with me... so if you don't mind I think I'll just call it a day, please continue with your... 'performance''..."

This is followed immediately by the female lead complaining that she could not understand a word of what was just said due to his thick Kansai Regional Accent.

Kamen Rider Faiz (aka Kamen Rider 555) from 2003 has, in early episodes, a rather creepy commercial that's in very good English (it doesn't make perfect sense, but it's not supposed to: Faiz has a bit of Mind Screw to it.) At the end of each episode, the ominous voice from the commercial introduces the preview of the next episode with "Open your eyes for the next Faiz" (and for the finale, "Open your eyes for the last Faiz.") The transforming belts have computer voices that also speak decent English (however, the phrases are one or two words only, and the only time you get awkward English in Faiz is when a computer phrase gets longer: When summoning the Jet Sliger rocket-bikes, the computer says "Jet Sliger, come closer.")

Leo, The Dragon of the Non-Serial Movie, is apparently an American, and speaks perfect English. He was not introduced as such, and didn't speak until his second scene, so it was very jarring. Leo's actor, Peter Ho, is Chinese-American and speaks Chinese, Japanese, and English. Supposedly, the filmmakers found his Japanese bad, so they had him say the lines in English instead.

Kamen Rider Blade is an exception, since, unlike 555 and Kabuto, its computers speak horribly accented English which is a shame, since they have an awful lot of lines.

Kamen Rider Kabuto from 2006 has its computers speaking very good English. Typically, the Rider will call "Raidaa Kikku!" and the computer will repeat "Rider Kick" flawlessly. Also, in a few post-credit scenes (not part of the series continuity), Tendou Souji reveals that he can speak English with almost no accent if he puts his mind to it.

His actor, Hiro Mizushima, was raised in Europe at a young age and can speak perfect English. It's quite jarring when, in one of the post-credit bonus scenes, one character talks about Kamen Rider "Stron-gaa" and moments later Tendo refers to him as "Stron-ger", the correct English pronunciation of the name, and even puns off of his name by saying Kabuto is "strongest". Mizushima gets to show off his talent more in some of the Super Hero Time Crossover bumpers, affecting a falsetto voice to "impersonate" Zuban and mess with Kagami's head. "No, no, repeat after me!"

In the Non-Canon Movie, The computer on the ZECT Space Station speaks in Perfect English, however Kagami (who gave the orders to the computer) speaks in heavily accented Gratuitous English.

Kamen Rider Decade doesn't seem to know what to do with this trope sometimes. The voice for the tools for both Decade and Diend calls out various rider names and attacks in seemingly random accents. For riders with English words for names, they're called out in clear English accents. Some attacks with English names are called out in gratuitous English accents. Others still are actual Japanese words or phrases that are spoken as though it's new to the language.

There is a Blink and You'll Miss It moment in Kamen Rider Double: A to Z - The Gaia Memories of Fate. In the opening the helicopter pilot has 2 lines, both in perfect English (the actor being a Westerner): "What the..." and "Kamen Rider". Also, Aya Kujo in "The T That Came Back" pronounced English fairly well, Justified by the fact that she had spent several months in Los Angeles.

Kamen Rider OOO has its own brief moment in an early episode when Chiyoko, thinking Ankh's rather coarse Japanese is because he was raised overseas, determines to correct it and starts the lesson with a perfect 'Repeat after me.' Given the character is an international traveler its not too odd but it’s still sufficiently polished to cause a double take.

In Tomica Hero Rescue Force, the Supreme Commander, Natsuno "Nancy" Nanbu/Rescue Universe, unconsciously speaks coherent English while in the heat of battle. Her underlings (most of which can't understand English) ask her to speak Japanese in very broken Gratuitous English.

"Crime no Theme", the Villain Song from J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai is strewn with lines such as "Go and kill 'em!" and "Go to hell!" in perfect English, which is pretty unnerving if you're not expecting it. It should be noted that the voice in the song says "JAKQ" as "Jacker", adding to the effect.

Masato Shimon's rendition of Seijuu Sentai Gingaman's opening theme in English is very well pronounced due to his fluency in English, however the translation is not that good, which is naturally not his fault.

Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters has the Go-Busters' equipment say some short phrases in perfectly unaccented English (though a few grammatical errors, such as "Let's Driving" still exist).

Shuriken Sentai Ninninger has an example for unsuspecting viewers. Episode 34 starts out with a civilian calling for help in perfect English. This becomes less surprising, but possibly more awesome, when you learn that the civilian was played by Yoshi Sudarso.

Persons Unknown has an interesting Meta version of this trope. When the captives first meet Tom, the owner of the Chinese restaurant, he can only speak in very bad Engrish. In later episodes, however, he speaks English perfectly due to his true identity being revealed as a member of the organization behind the kidnappings who was putting on the accent just for show.

Invoked in the original Japanese dub of Sesame Street. The dub's intent was to teach proper English to Japanese children, and did so by keeping several parts of dialogue un-dubbed, producing this effect.

A common occurrence in Scandi crime dramas, which can throw English watchers of them, are characters breaking into English, sometimes with very English accents.

Brigitte Nyborg in Borgen is a case in point; when she speaks English (i.e. to a foreign leader) she almost sounds Australian.

Katrine Fonsmark sounds like a robotic version of CJ Cregg from The West Wing. This is perhaps not surprising as the actor based her line delivery on CJ.

Mexican-American Game Show host Marco Antonio Regil is a very fluent English speaker. As the host of various Spanish-language adaptations of Family Feud, he says "strike" on a regular basis with no noticeable accent. Also, during one episode, he teased a contestant for mispronouncing the word "tequila" by pronouncing "tortillas" and "frijoles" the way an English speaker who didn't speak Spanish would pronounce them.

This clip from the Korean sketch comedy show Tokyo Breakfast demonstrates some actually decent English, but be warned; the writers don't seem to be aware of the concept of N-Word Privileges, so, uh...yeah.

Music

Israeli singers Geva Alon and Ehud Banai both have songs written completely in perfect English, even though Geva's song is just a remake of an old song.

Israeli singing competitions nowadays usually feature a lot of English-language songs, although some try to tone it down and promote (or outright require) singing in Hebrew. The quality of the accent ranges significantly, with examples of this popping up frequently.

Both X Japan vocalist Toshi and bandleader/drummer Yoshiki have VERY good English. For Yoshiki, it's a result of his having lived in the US since the early 1990s and have studied the language since long before then. He writes songs such as Art of Life with quite coherent English lyrics, blogged only in English, regularly speaks in English, and otherwise is stunningly good with it for a non-native speaker. Toshi can sing in quite coherent English and could as far back as 1989 with the song "Desperate Angel".

hide also demonstrated the ability to sing in English with his band Zilch and as seen on What's Up Mr. Jones only had a slight accent; otherwise, the pronunciations is near-perfect. Hide's solo song "Lemoned I Scream" is, however, incoherent even by Japanese standards

Likewise, visual key artist Gasket is a fairly fluent, though accented, speaker of (mostly American) English. He's made the comment that a good part of his book collection is in English, since that's the language a lot of the more interesting things are published first. He also speaks a fair amount of Mandarin Chinese. His French, on the other hand, is nigh-indecipherable...

Ex-Galneryus vocalist Yuma-B not only sings in perfect (albeit heavily accented) English, but posts in it on his site BBS.

Several songs by Itou Kinaki are sung in Japanese mixed with some English, but she always sings it without an accent. In an OST for a BL Game Lamento-BEYOND THE VOID by Nitro+ CHIRAL, she sang a song with Watanabe Kazuhiro, both voices singing entirely accent-less English. Even Watanabe's voice sounded like someone singing a song out of Lion King (in the sense that his accents are so English-like, rather than Japanese-like). They also each sing one completely-English song well in the Original Image Soundtrack of Fate/Zero.

In the Complete Symphonic recording of Les Misérables (a must-have for the die-hard fans of the musical), the role of Eponine is played by Japanese-cast-member Kaho Shimada. She sings in English with hardly any accent, despite not knowing any English at the time of recording.

Listen to Space Sonic by Ellegarden. Sounds like a typical rock band from USA? But the band is entirely Japanese. Having a vocalist that worked for nearly a decade in California sure helps.

L'arc-en-Ciel sings in both Japanese and English. Their opening track for Fullmetal Alchemist (as well as the ending song for the movie, Conquerors of Shamballa) switches between the two, but the ending song they did for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was fully in English, and while not absolutely perfect, is very easily understandable. Their lead singer, Hyde, actually pays an American woman to proof-read his lyrics and provide him with a pronunciation guide.

Rie Fu. It helps that she spent three years in Maryland, and went to school in the UK. She basically has an American accent with her English, which is also grammatically correct.

Singers Utada Hikaru and Crystal Kay threw many people for a loop upon exhibiting flawless English. Utada was raised in America, but the fact that Crystal Kay sounds like an American R&B singer despite being born and raised in Japan is still considered astounding (her father is African-American, however, so it is justified in a way).

Maaya Sakamoto has some songs with nice English. Wolf's Rain's "gravity" comes to mind. A song on her latest album Kazeyomi has "colors", which is entirely in pretty well spoken English. "THE GARDEN OF EVERYTHING" which she sang as a duet with Steve Conte (mentioned above) has flawless English vocals, both in her backups and solos. Funny enough, a comment from the Nikopachi Singles compilation album the song is featured on has a comment from Maaya saying, "Steve emails me all the time, but I can never respond back because I don't understand English!". And then there's this, and this.

BoA (aka Boa Kwan) has some nice English. Born in Korea, she knows Korean, Japanese, some English, and has sung one or two songs in Mandarin. She has full songs in English, including a translated version of "Every Heart", "Amazing Kiss" and other pop songs she's done—she also has "The Christmas Song" and "Last Christmas" on two of her holiday singles. Her English is accented a little, but she's improved a lot over the years.

She recently had an American debut album and her English sounded pretty good. There were even some songs where it was hard to tell that she had an accent.

Yuna Ito has flawless English. This isn't surprising considering she was born and raised in the United States. Her English songs are amazing—she's done "My Heart Will Go On" originally by Celine Dion" and "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey.

Jyongri has perfect English. She's of Korean descent, but was born and raised in Japan, and speaks both Japanese and English fluently—she did attend an international school, though. Her song "Winter Love Story" is about half English and half Japanese.

The Korean band Clazziquai has vocalists who can sing and rap in solid English, resulting in a good number of English-language songs.

Japanese band Godiego (pronounced Go-dye-go) has songs that are partially in English or entirely in English, not surprising as two of the five members are American, although their main vocalist and lyricist are wholly Japanese (their lyricist did however spend her childhood in Montreal and after that lived in New York). Their songs include "The Galaxy Express 999" and "Monkey Magic", the theme songs for the Galaxy Express 999 movie and Monkey. The soundtrack they performed for Monkey titled Magic Monkey consisted of 11 entirely English tracks and was the Number 1 Record in Japan for 1979. They also have the distinction of being the first rock band to play in China and Nepal.

Loudness, being a band that takes heavy inspiration from American hair metal and The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, more or less required this. They also took this trope to its logical conclusion when they had a need to replace their vocalist by hiring an American instead of another Japanese singer. But when they rehired a Japanese singer, they chose Masaki Yamada, who became an American citizen in the 1990s and speaks English with virtually no accent.

Italian comedian Adriano Celentano released a particularly catchy single sung in "surprisingly good English-sounding gibberish" which supposedly sounds very authentic to people who don't actually speak English. In fact, it's pure gibberish in any language.

Los Angeles native Joe Inoue is essentially a polyglot. His debut EP in Japan featured songs entirely in English and entirely in Japanese, while his first studio album was all in Japanese with his native English peppered in, like "CLOSER" which was the theme for Naruto Shippuden. His subsequent project is TENGUBOY where he raps in Japanese AND English and he has also taken on Portuguese in his vlogs as he tours Brazil.

Miyavi of the Visual Kei band Dué le Quartz spent six months studying English in California. Consequently, he speaks pretty good, coherent English and blogs in both Japanese and English; granted, the latter is mainly text speak, but this just seems to be his idiolect, since he renders "with" as "wiz".

It's Miyavi-ish, more or less. His Japanese is the same way, when he's not making a particular effort to be more formal. The English in his song lyrics is pretty coherent, insofar as any of his lyrics are coherent in any language, and in one song he even managed to not mangle some Spanish. He's also no longer with Dué le Quartz — he's gone solo and started his own label.

Being married to a Hawaiian probably doesn't hurt either.

Lotus Juice may be part of the Pantheon of Surprisingly Good English. In all fairness, he did spend a good chunk of his childhood going to school in the United States.

There's a group of German musicians who call themselves Fiddler's Green. They perform Irish folk, both old and new standards and their own work, in English that makes you go "What's wrong with his accent?" instead of "Dear Gods that's a German trying to sound Irish." It's not surprisingly good, it's surprisingly amazing. “The Night Pat Murphy Died”, admittedly a song from Newfoundland, and it STILL sounds like a weird Irish accent.

She covered "Your Eyes" by Tatsuro Yamashita, who is another example of this trope, having released multiple songs like this one in perfect English, and inserting completely correct English into otherwise Japanese songs.

Both Koshi Inaba and Tak Matsumoto AKA B'z is fluent in English. Considering how they have worked and played with many western artists such as Slash, Billy Sheehan, Pat Torpey, Eric Martin, Larry Carlton, Aerosmith, etc, this is easily understandable. In their latest live in USA and their special live together with Linkin Park, Inaba easily change between English and Japanese. The band also employed many western artist for both studio recording and live performance and many times in their live DVD, it's shown that they talked to them without translator. This is an example of a B'z song in English.

This English version of Denji Sentai Megaranger's (the Japanese source for the U.S.'s Power Rangers in Space) full opening theme is in surprisingly good English, barring the (very) few odd grammar intonations and native accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YwwYB9Qlbk (Right now, the full lyric list can't be found, so some lyrics might be hard to interpret.)

Tokyo Incidents can pull this off, as proven by Noudouteki Sanpunkan. The first time you hear it, you may be shocked by the sudden transition to Japanese.

While Miliyah Kato usually only sprinkles English phrases here and there throughout her songs, she's rathergoodatit. Granted, she does make a few mistakes, but it's actually a surprise when she messes up.

BENI - aka Beni Arashiro, is half-Japanese, half-American, therefore, she is fluent in both English & Japanese. This can be seen in her cover of The Boy Is Mine with Tynisha Keli, & also in some of her Japanesesongs

MiChi - Japanese-British & speaks English fluently with a British accent. Wanna see?

Japanese-American Anna Tsuchiya - Although her English is not perfect (she was bilingual at a young age but her parents divorced & her father went back to the states), she has a pretty goodaccent

OLIVIA - aka Olivia Lufkin - is Okinawan-American. She speaks both English & Japanese. She even has an English version of her song Wish.

Japanese singer and actress Ayaka Komatsu released an English-language single with excellent pronunciation (you can hear it here). In a strange case of Ink-Suit Actor, she was in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon playing the role of Minako Aino, who in the anime version was another example of this trope.

J-Rock singer Miz has outstanding English. Check out these English versions of New Day and Backseat Baby.

DREAMS COME TRUE can pull off some excellent English, in both grammar and pronunciation. You may know them for their song "Sweet Dreams", but another song of theirs, "Winter Song", is sung in completely coherent English.

Man With A Mission's Jean-Ken Johnny and Tokyo Tanaka sing in remarkably good English despite being Japanese Ultimate Life Forms created by Jimi Hendrix with the heads of wolves on human bodies. A good listen to "Database" and "Raise your Flag" is enough proof.

ABBA English was always good due to being Swedish, but what makes it especially apparent is Bjorn's ability to make his songs funny, e.g. Does Your Mother Know and Two For The Price Of One. this interview clearly explains

Marie Serneholt was interviewed on Finnish Television, note just like ABBA, she's from Sweden, and yet her English is noticably interesting. Her ability English to speak sounded more American than the British version she and the rest of the A-Teens were taught; this was due to having been in the United States and having friends from the country as she explains.

Ylvis, a Norwegian talk show host and band, have several songs in English with only slight accents. That their songs are uniquely odd is entirely beside the point.

Namie Amuro's "Neonlight Lipstick" inexplicably has more English than it does Japanese, but said English is fairly well pronounced and manages to make sense.

Even for a musician born in Japan who moved to America during high school, Angela Aki can move very smoothly between English and Japanese. Non-Japanese-speakers who start listening to her "Kiss from a rose" thinking it's just another Japanese song are likely to not notice when she switches from Japanese to English until at least a few lines after it happens.

Not that surprising since her mother is an American, and her father is the founder of one of the biggest English schools in Japan.

Long Runner rock vocalist and fashion pioneer Kenji Sawada, fluent in French and English, who produced an entire album in English, The Fugitive exclusively for Europe(It was later rereleased in Japan with the subtitle Ai no Troubadour.).

FEMM has all of their songs in English with next-to-perfect pronunciation and grammar. For example, "Kill the DJ".

Ayumi Hamasaki has, since her RAINBOW album in 2002, started gradually sprinkling English lyrics into her songs. Her accent is still prominent - though it's improved in the past twelve years - but lyrically, the English lyrics she writes tend to be grammatically sound and present clear ideas. And it's incredibly rare to hear her mix up the l/r pronunciation - even back during RAINBOW, she nailed that part. She did, however, have a little practice with her NOTHING FROM NOTHING mini-album back in 1995.

J-Pop Girl Group E-girls has this in the usual "throw in some English words for flavor" fashion. But they usually make sense and are pronounced well.

Japanese rapper COMA-CHI displays this in a similar fashion, usually in the form of rap clichés. But they're well-pronounced rap clichés. She does have more of an accent, though.

Shiina Ringo's English is very good (albeit still somewhat accented), no doubt helped by a two-month stay in London. Some of the English lyrics she sings are her own, and they're free of grammatical errors or similar writing flubs.

Münster native Marian Gold, lead singer of Alphaville, sings and writes lyrics in such excellent English that it's hard to place him as a native German, though his pronunciation of the "th" sound, which doesn't exist in German, is inconsistent.

Singer nano, best known for doing themes for shows like Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Btooom! and a ton of fan covers of songs posted on Nico Nico Douga, effortlessly switches between English and Japanese in her music with not a hint of an accent. She is a Japanese-American who was born and raised in New York City and moved to Japan when she was in her mid-teens.

Hyakka Seiran, a CD series with Japanese voice actors covering famous anime themes, has a near-unaccented and perfectly intonated version of Skies of Love, the first Legend of Galactic Heroes opening. It was sung by Minoru Shiraishi and - YMMV - he gave the original artist a run for her money.

Masato, frontman of Japanese post-hardcore band Coldrain, has some of the best English pronunciation of any rock vocalist in Japan. He's half-American and half-Japanese, and sings with zero trace of a Japanese accent.

Kenta Koie of electronicore band Crossfaith is able to conduct himself rather well in English. His screamed vocal style masks some of his Japanese accent, but as the band have included more cleanly sung vocals on their recent albums, he's still able to sing in English very well, and speaks it well enough (albeit with a strong accent) to give interviews to Western media.

"I'm a Lady Now" is sung entirely in English by a then-5-year-old Japanese girl. There are a few pronunciation mistakes due to singing a rather uptempo song, but Hotzmic otherwise seems to know English amazingly well for someone her age. This song was also used in Rhythm Heaven Megamix. (More on that under Video Games.)

Professional Wrestling

In Major League Wrestling in 2003, CM Punk was working Heel and claimed that the Japanese wrestler Nosawa was Straight Edge like him, with announcer Joey Styles usually talking about seeing Nosawa at the bar. At MLW War Games, September 19, 2003, Raven defeated Nosawa. Punk started criticizing Nosawa for letting him down, and Nosawa responded, "I don't give a [bleep!]," with Joey saying, "He speaks very good English."note Although Joey Styles was the announcer at the original event, he has been replaced on the DVD by Kevin Kelly. This led to Punk basically getting Squashed immediately after by the returning Vampiro.

The Fighter's History series also had characters, for the most part, speaking their respective languages fluently. It almost lets you forget how big of a Large Ham many characters, like Ray, are ("BIG TORNADOOO! DYNAMITE!")

The ending songs for the Xenosaga games are in English, in both the Japanese and English releases. Unlike many Japanese songs in English, the words would be intelligible if not for the fact that the lyrics tend to be a bit overshadowed by the melody. In This Serenity (the ending song to the anime) isn't quite as well done, but is better than a lot of gratuitous English songs you hear in anime...

Ditto for the original Xenogears. Yasunori Mitsuda composed the songs for Gears and Saga Episode I, and Joanne Hogg, from Ireland, sang them.

Again for the game Xenoblade Chronicles X. Hiroyuki Sawano composed many themes, even battle themes, with English (possibly as a reference to the fact that the survivors of the apocalypse are from the United States).

Considering that most American characters in the Fatal Fury games speak Gratuitous English (Mr. Bogard being the worst of the bunch), it's a bit of a shock to fight Wolfgang Krauser, who has an actual English voice actor, B.J. Love (who also doubles as Fatal Fury 3's announcer).

The great irony of this all being that Krauser is quite explicitly German. So...we have All-American-ish Terry Bogard speaking with such blatantly over exaggerated Engrish to the point of parody...and on the other side, we have German Noble Wolfgang Krauser, speaking in perfectly clear, American-accented English. Yeaaaahhh.....

B.J. Love also does Franco Bash, an Italian.

Another SNK example is from the Fu'un Series and first main boss, King Leo. While his shadow, King Lion, speaks with a clear Japanese accent, King Leo speaks perfectly American accented English courtesy of John Hulaton.

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike also does this with Alex, Gill, Urien, Hugo, Dudley, and Q, all of which have not only English VAs, but ones who do their characters various regional accents fairly well (especially Dudley).

DonPachi. While spoken by a Japanese actor, the accent is minimal and the grammar is correct. Granted, the acting isn't always perfect and some of the lines are downright corny, but it remains believable and sets the mood well enough.

One song in Katamari Damacy, "Que Sera Sera", is fully-sung in English by Charlie Kosei, who apparently grew up with English-speaking parents. While indeed Surprisingly Good English for a Widget Series, if you listen to the song closely, you can tell he's not a native English speaker. Peppered throughout the song are such lyrics as "word you up" ("wad you up"), "lup up" ("lump up"), and "wizyuu" ("with you"). The remainder of the lyrics are pronounced in a perfect American accent — which is actually another tip-off; all English-speaking Americans speak with some sort of regional accent.

The entire intro to the original Star Ocean is spoken in English with Japanese subtitles and doesn't have any real glaring errors to speak of, this probably being mostly due to natural speakers delivering the lines. This doesn't carry over to other uses of English later in the game though, as seen from a computer that asks "CONNECT WITH WHAT?" when prompting for a username and responds to a successful input with a "COLLECT".

Before it was released internationally, Sonic Battle had the default Japanese script and an English script that could be turned on in the options. The latter is entirely grammatically correct and understandable by a native speaker - so much, in fact, that the only change made during localization was the removal of a mild swear word from Rouge's dialogue in her respective chapter.

The Japanese video game Metal Wolf Chaos is voiced entirely in perfect English — it's horribly cheesy English, but perfectly pronounced and structured nonetheless. If not for the Japanese menu text and subtitles you would have sworn it had been made in America.

The Japanese logo of Fire Emblem Awakening has a vague outline of the game's plot described in English underneath the stylized and very Japanese title. It's good enough that the actual English logo doesn't change it at all.

The song "Eyes on Me", from Final Fantasy VIII, is sung with good English pronunciation by Chinese diva Faye Wong (and is actually used for part of the ending medley). The grammar leaves something to be desired, however ("Whenever sang my songs"/"Whenever said my words" and "If frown is shown then"/"Just reach me out then").

The ending theme of Final Fantasy IX, "Melodies of Life", is performed in both Japanese (for the Japanese version) and very good English (for every other version) by Emiko Shiratori.

The intro of Mega Man X includes a warning from Dr. Light not to disturb the capsule X is kept in until his 30-year diagnostics are complete, with an explanation of what X is, and why the diagnostics are being performed. In the original Rockman X, this is written entirely in fully understandable and 100% mistake-free English, with Japanese subtitles running along the bottom. Consequently, when it was released in North America and in PAL territories, literally nothing was changed about it apart from removing the subtitles and spelling Dr. Light's name differently.

One of Gradius Gaiden's attract demos, a Star Wars-like narrative, is narrated by an announcer speaking perfect English, though he puts unusually high emphasis on the "di" in "Gradius".

The other voice samples have good grammar and speech too, and not just in Gaiden, in fact all the way back to Salamander, the first Gradius game with English voices. In the Japanese too.

A large number of Konami original songs in Dance Dance Revolution, beatmania, and other Bemani games have perfect English—Naoki's songs ("Dynamite Rave" and "Love Again Tonight" just to name a couple), in particular, have a lot of natural-sounding English thanks to the addition of Western vocalists such as Paula Terry. Some other English-language songs, like "Moon", "Roulette" and other songs sung by Erika Mochizuki, on the other hand...

The announcers from Dance Dance Revolution and Dance ManiaX speak in perfect English. Those of other Bemani games, not so much, with a few exceptions (the announcers from Pop'n Music 16 and beatmania IIDX 16 are two such exceptions).

Billy Kane in the Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series sometimes speaks good English. While he gets the occasional line like "I wish I could tear him apart!", most of his intros feature him saying generic things like "HEY HEY HEY!"

Tekken makes almost everyone (except those two from Brazil) speak their countries most widely spoken language, often times having two characters speak to each other in different languages at the same time. So it was surprising to hear Jin speak English in Tekken 4.

As of Tag Tournament 2, Christie and Eddy speak their appropriate Portuguese, Miguel his Spanish, Leo her German, and Lili wrongly accented French.

Lei Wulong is also another example. Despite being Hong Kong, he's an International Super Police, so he's fluent in many languages, English included. The surprise is that he constantly speaks English voiced by a Japanese guy (Hiroya Ishimaru, the official dub voice of Jackie Chan, the man Lei is based off on)

All spoken dialogue in the game Sin and Punishment is in Surprisingly Good English, only marred by the somewhat muddy audio quality caused by the game originally being cartridge-based.

Justified by the little fact that the game was always developed with an American release in mind, a release that was only canceled due to the Nintendo 64's pre-death decline stateside (the Virtual Console release proves that people would have bought it if it was released before).

The character Eriko from the Japanese version of the original Persona spent some time studying abroad in America. As such, she periodically slips into English that, although technically gratuitous, is generally well-formed and sensical. This is likely due to Atlus' willingness to do the research (this multilingual aspect was entirely dropped, rather than shifted to another language, for her counterpart Ellen in the American localization).

The lyrics of Persona 4's soundtrack are almost completely in English, much of it decently grammatical. Barring a few lines (The "My Life" in "I reach out to the truth of my life", for instance), they're pronounced relatively fine, if a little hard to make out due to speed.

Persona 3 has a fair deal of Engrish in its soundtrack's lyrics, but the rapping segments are in fairly good idiomatic English (accounting for the intentionally loose grammar), since rapper Lotus Juice spent most of his formative years in the United States.

Starting with Persona 4: Arena, the series's main English lyricist is Benjamin Franklin (obviously not that one), a native English speaker. Since then, the English lyrics been completely fluent and idiomatic, as well as more clearly thematically resonant, even though the actual pronunciation by the native Japanese singers is still sometimes less than stellar.

Persona 5's UI is filled with English text, which surprisingly enough is completely accurate and totally understandable, to the point that non-Japanese speakers can easily navigate menus even if they're playing the Japanese version. As with the previous Persona games, the game also has half a dozen songs with English lyrics ("Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There", "Life Will Change", "Last Surprise", "Rivers in the Desert" and "Beneath the Mask"), all of which have benefited from the Benjamin Franklin treatment.

The soundtrack for Space Invaders Extreme features English narration telling the story of the invasion between each group of songs. It doesn't explain much, but it's voiced perfectly.

Both SIE announcers too, especially the one for Space Invaders Extreme 2.

In Punch-Out!! for the Wii, every character speaks their native tongue (except for the voiceless ones, like King Hippo) and is incredibly spot-on. Next Level gets bonus points for giving Great Tiger fluent Hindi. Not only is there Surprisingly Good Hindi, but also Turkish, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese, and German.

In the EXIT games (PSP, DS, Xbox 360), just about everything was in Surprisingly Good English, from the voice acting (more hits than misses), to the menus and text bubbles that show up in-game.

No More Heroes is a great example of this, as almost all the voiceovers are performed by professional American voice actors, the game features several songs in English, and even the in-game billboards are written in perfect (and oftentimes downright funny) English. And a number of minor characters in the game (namely the Part-Time Job guy, the clerk at K-Entertainment, the owner of Area 51, and Thunder Ryu) speak in thickly accented Engrish. Note that this is a game afraid to leave its players scratching their heads.

Capcom has a tendency to do this with their games when voice acting is involved. Viewtiful Joe and Resident Evil both have English voice acting, even in Japan. Viewtiful Joe's is excellent. Resident Evil's is... not so much. It improves by the fourth game though. This also hods true for the Devil May Cry series. It’s easy to mistake it for a dub. Granted, the voice acting is very cheesy, especially in Dante's case, but anyone who plays it soon realizes that's practically the entire point of the series.

Nearly half the dialogue in Siren: Blood Curse is in Surprisingly Good English. The rest is either in Japanese, or intentionally heavily-accented English.

Even though it was a Japan-only title at the time, the entire game Pulseman is spoken in good English (even by characters that are meant to be Japanese). While the English is correct, it doesn't technically match what it should be ("Water will destroy Pulse Man" doesn't mean Super Drowning Skills).

In DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition, a Korea-region game, there is a bonus behind-the-scenes video about the video for the song "Dark Envy". The protagonist's actor answers the interview questions in fluent English with, oddly enough, no subtitles in Korean.

Guilty Gear is a mixed bag, for the characters that actually have moves with English names. Somewhat ironically, Chipp has fairly good English pronunciation... and instead yells gratuitous Japanese because he's a wannabe ninja. Also, the announcers from XX onward speak perfect English, justified that they are Americans (Gregory Payne in XX to Slash and Neil Moody in Accent Core).

Genetos. All of the English was translated by (a) Japanese speaker(s), and with the exception of a few odd word choices, could be understood by a kid who doesn't know what Japanese is. The English help HTML file even has a slightly heartwarming message from the author asking if "his friends overseas" would send him an email to correct any mistakes in the manual and the game. Of course, make sure you see the little prompt in the game's menu screens that says L SHIFT = English.

The very first Gundam: The Battle Master game had only one voiced segment in the entire game and it's the very intro itself, spoken in complete fluent English (with Japanese text) by an American narrator, the very same one who doubles as the announcer.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, all characters (except Jigglypuff) retain the same voice actors between the Japanese and English versions. This results in some characters speaking in Gratuitous English due to their Japanese voice actors, but Peach is voiced by an American actress and speaks in perfect English. The same applies to Mario and Luigi, although they have heavy Italian accents and only speak in very short stock phrases. In Brawl, while there are a lot more characters with different voice actors depending on version than in Melee, Captain Falcon, Zero Suit Samus, and Peach retain the same voice actors between the Japanese and English versions and speak very perfectly passable English, as do a number of Assist Trophies. Mario, Luigi, and Wario all have heavy Italian accents, but this makes sense.

This is, of course, because the games use American voice talent—with one exception: A man who goes by Ryu (no, not that one), who voices Chop Chop Master Onion, Joe Chin, Ma-san and Captain Fussenpepper, who, while sounding appropriately Engrishy for Onion, sounds like the stereotypical hillbilly for the Captain. This man also wrote the lyrics for every song in the entire series, which, aside from the occasional bizarre spellings for certain onomatopoeias, leave no trace that this was ever devised by a Japanese person.

The funniest thing is that the narrator, Edison Mineki, is a Brazil-born Japanese-Italian.

In Tengai Makyou Fuun Kabuki-Den, when Kabuki travels to London to try to rescue Okuni there, the British people he finds when he lands in England at London's customs speak in perfect English. Zeami (his partner) then uses a translating spell so that Kabuki can speak and understand English, which renders all of the text and dialogue into Japanese for the players' benefit.

Tales of Vesperia has its theme "Ring a Bell/Kane wo Narashite" sung in perfect English/Japanese by Bonnie Pink.

Same happens with Mamoritai/White Wishes, the opening of Tales of Graces, sung in English/Japanese by BoA.

The X-Men arcade game from Konami has an odd mixture of both this and the "other" kind, with the latter instances being the most famous (at least among gamers).

Sunsoft's Galaxy Fight features the than fighting game standard Scary Black Man Golden Done, voiced by an actual native English speaking black man. His theme song (as horribly cheesy as it is), a lot of the incidental flavor text, and a few ambient announcements made during one stage are all fluently spoken/rapped and/or grammatically correct, as well.

The very well-known incantation for Archer's UnlimitedBladeWorks in Fate/EXTRA. The quality is such that some even believed the whole of the game's Japanese audio had been translated.

Baraduke (1985) has an international version named Alien Sector which is pretty unnecessary, since the whole game had all texts in mostly correct English anyway. Even the lone bit of digitized audio ("I'm Your Friend!!", spoken by the friendly alien at the beginning) sounds good, with only a little hint of Japanese accent.

The vocal songs in the Sega Saturn game Clockwork Knight were written and sung by Japanese people, and they came out decently enough. Special mention goes to the Ending Theme, "A Lullaby", which, save for the line "when loneliness bring you down", is sung in near-perfect English.

A lot of the written English in Super Robot Wars is nearly perfect, even in the anime version - just try taking a look at the Alt Eisen and Exbein Boxer's screens sometimes. In Inspector, if you take a closer look, the Exbein's tiniest and most illegible text actually DOES read Weapon Selector (the creators didn't slack off, even on things people can't see well).

Granted, Banpresto tends to use several different languages in the franchise, from German to Spanish and most of it tends to be correct. So they probably just do their research well.

All jubeat arcade games have a tutorial with announcer commentary in perfect English, despite the game being released primarily for the Japanese market.

Though most foreign shipgirls in Kantai Collection (as well as Kongou, who despite being the personification of a Japanese ship was born in England) tend to use Gratuitous Foreign Language, British battleship Warspite's English is nearly flawless, with her only mistake being her odd pronunciation of "Admiral". She even goes so far as to use a proper British accent whenever she speaks English.

Rhythm Heaven Megamix uses the song "I'm a Lady Now," sung by the then 5-year-old Japanese girl Hotzmic. When Nintendo of America localized this for the Anglosphere, they left the song completely unchanged, as the lyrics and her English are perfectly understandable. (More on the song itself under Music.)

Most of the lyrics in The World Ends with You's soundtrack are written in perfectly fluent and idiomatic English. Though a few of the singers are obviously less than fluent, many of them are actually native English speakers from the UK and the USA, and even some of the native Japanese singers have excellent pronunciation.

Real Life

Perhaps YOU, dear troper, should you not come from the Anglosphere.

Japanese Actor Kei Hosogai. Many Gokaiger fans outside of Japan were surprised by his fluent unaccented English. Many Power Rangers fans upon learning this are hoping he would reprise his role of Basco on Power Rangers. Though when one learns he spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Seattle and Hawaii, it's not surprising.

Actor James Hong is fluent in English, being a Minnesota native. For most of his acting roles, he's actually had to fake a Chinese accent (not always successfully).

Pat Morita was born and raised in California and spoke perfect English, faking a Japanese-sounding accent for his most famous roles in Happy Days and The Karate Kid. His real name really was Noriyuki, too; "Pat" was the stage name, not the other way around as sometimes claimed.

Comedian Henry Cho is an interesting variant. Being a lifelong resident of Knoxville, Cho is a Korean-American with a completely natural Tennessee accent, which he freely permits is okay to find funny.

Inverted in the case of Jake Adelstein. Being the first American journalist to work as a Japanese-language reporter for a major Japanese newspaper, Surprisingly Good Japanese was a requirement; he even scored better in proficiency tests than native speakers. The flipside: because he spent so much time speaking it in an all-Japanese environment, when a case required him to interact with English speakers, he found himself stuttering over his words and even veering towards Engrish at times. He recovered pretty quickly.

Former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman, now based in Japan, speaks Japanese well enough to host his own show.

Yukio Mishima spoke really eloquent and excellent English. Even more impressive as he taught himself the language - as a student in post-WW2 Japan, Japanese students weren't permitted to study abroad, and so he listened to tapes of English speakers every day. He could apparently speak German and Chinese as well.

Hikaru Utada is bilingually fluent in Japanese and English — in fact her debut album, released in Japan was made up exclusively of English songs. It helps that she was raised in New York.

Mari Iijima, of Macross fame, is fluent in English (though she still speaks with a noticeable accent). Her language skills were good enough for ADV to ask her to reprise her iconic role, in English, for their Macross release.

Yuko Goto is very proficient in English. Directors in Japan will occasionally take advantage of this, as did Bandai USA during their Haruhi promotions.

Members of small nations, such as Scandinavians and in particular, the Dutch. It is because foreigners seldom bother to learn their languages, so they are taught English (and other foreign languages) at school.

It's also because their languages are closest to English in terms of verb structure and in the case of Dutch, has some of the same words. In Scandinavia, movies are shown in English with subtitles, and much of the music people listen to is done by English-speaking artists, and the Swedish musicians often have perfect English as well. Many people you try to talk to in their language will realise you are a native English speaker and speak to you in it instead.

English, Dutch, and German are all in the same language branch (West Germanic) and are thus very closely related. If you speak one of these, the other two will be MUCH eaiser for you to learn than any other foreign language. The Scandinavian languages are a different (but still fairly closely related) branch called North Germanic. Not quite as closely related to English as the other West Germanic languages, but still within the same general family.

Israel is also a notable case. Like many other countries formerly ruled by the British and currently heavily exposed to American media (which it never dubs, unless it’s aimed at children), most Israelis now speak at least enough English to get by, and a tourist never has to ask anyone if they speak English. For a while, there was a generation of Israelis who learned English through the European Cartoon Network (that was to only kids channel in English with no dub and no subtitles) developing a fairly impressive accent, but nowadays it no longer airs in Israel.

The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, though born in Japan, has lived in England for most of his life and it shows.

Korean singer PSY went to college in America, and is fluent in English, which helped a lot during the "Gangnam Style" craze as he could easily appear on American talk shows.

AKB48 member Sayaka Akimoto is also great at English. Her Filipino Mother probably taught her the language well.

Played Straight with Rina Hirata as she was raised in Arizona for most of her life and she was the main English announcer for AKB48 when they had their concert in Washington DC. She also uploads 30 second English lessons on her Google+ on a regular basis.

Twitter, and sites like it. Users for whom English is a second language often post in English so good it puts many native English posters to shame.

Alexander Skarsgård speaks American English well enough to play All-Americans like Brad Colbert in Generation Kill, in spite of being well into his twenties when he moved to the U.S. to pursue his acting career.

Many other Nordic actors are so good at English that they'll frequently play American or British characters; such as Mads Mikkelsen.

Tiffany and Jessica of the Korean girl group Girls' Generation were born in America. They've surprised more than one American morning show host who assumed all members are native Korean.

This trope is actually fairly common throughout the whole world of Korean Pop Music, due to the near constant influx of Korean-Americans choosing Korea as where they'll try their luck at a music career. From idol groups to hip-hop, it's not at all unusual to run into an American or two while looking into Korean music.

It might not be obvious from the way he chews out other developers on the Linux kernel mailing list, but Linus Torvalds is actually a native Swedish speaker. Torvalds is part of Finland's native Swedish-speaking minority. Linux's success has been attributed to Torvalds' fluency in English making him able to attract developers over the Internet.

As shown by Linux, English is, for better or for worse, the lingua franca of computer science. Programming language documentation is in English, as are forums and IRC channels. This means that there's a real incentive for developers to acquire a reasonably good command of English, even in countries where most people don't bother.

Kotaro Uchikoshi, the writer for Ever17 and Zero Escape, claims his English is not that good but is competent enough to communicate with fans on Twitter and Facebook. He is also known to make ridiculously complex English anagrams used as important plot points in his games.

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